There was an oath from the foiled villain, but Earle's hands were about his throat, forcing him to his knees. "You hound! How dare you touch my sister?" thundered Earle, and the wretch whined as well as he could for the clutch on his throat: "Your sister, sir? Oh, a thousand pardons! I thought it was my sweetheart, Hetty Wilkins, the maid of Miss Winans. We were courting here under the tree, and she sent me up to the servants' entrance to bring her shawl. In play only I threw it over her head, to give her a fright! It was a mistake. I beg your and the lady's pardon, and if you will let me go I'll never intrude on the grounds again!" The story was so plausible, the wretch's abject terror so pitiable, that Earle permitted him to sneak away, little dreaming that it was the veritable Lindsey Warwick he had held in his grasp--the detestable villain who, under the guise of Hetty's lover, was still pursuing the mad purpose of winning the senator's beautiful daughter, who was as far above him as the stars from the earth. He slunk away, and Earle knelt down by Precious, drawing the shawl from her white, unconscious face. "Darling, speak to me!" he cried anxiously. She shuddered, and opened her eyes. "Oh, brother, is it you?" clinging to him distractedly. One fearful glance around her, and she moaned: "Where is Lindsey Warwick? He came upon me suddenly and as I shrieked and turned to fly he threw a shawl over my head and----" "Lindsey Warwick! Is it possible? and I have let the wretch escape! Come, darling, to the house, that I may pursue the villain!" Earle cried in bitter anger and chagrin that he had been so easily duped. But though Senator Winans, with his son and a dozen other men, followed the trail all night, the search was hopeless, for Lindsey Warwick cleverly eluded capture. And through the long night hours the mother watched by the bedside of the nervous girl, who tossed restlessly upon her pillow, starting in alarm at every sound, and begging piteously to be taken away from Rosemont. "We will go to-morrow, dear," Mrs. Winans promised tenderly. Hetty Wilkins wept and protested when she was told the story of the man who claimed to be her lover. "There is some mistake," she cried. "My young man's name is Watson Hunter. And he wasn't here to-night at all." But Mrs. Winans insisted on dismissing Hetty next day, with a month's wages in lieu of a warning. This plan seemed best to them all. CHAPTER XXVII. A WAITING-MAID'S ROMANCE. "The music of thy voice I heard Nor wish while it enslaved me; I saw thine eyes, but nothing feared, Till fears no more had saved me. The unwary sailor thus aghast, The wheeling torrent viewing, 'Mid circling horrors sinks at last, In overwhelming ruin!"--BURNS.